Chapter 3

Blaze sat and sniffed the air.

She felt and scented her Dame, and the guardians enter the cavern and surround the dais. They all were amazed when the soft light appeared. They picked out the form on the dais and watched him as he removed the pack and put on the long black coat.

‘Dame, is it he?’ she dared to question.

‘No, the Mage must have transported himself here. There are no crystals so we will not be saved as the legend says. However, he would make you and your pup magically stronger. We have to save ourselves, dear.”

‘I’ve heard rumours of more magical items becoming available on the other islands. You will win his heart so he can get them for us and we can break the curse and be free to decide our own fate.’

‘He will not be happy if I seduce him and he finds I can’t leave here. Even your lover Dame, will not come and live here with you,’ Blaze thought back. Her Dame growled softly at her and ordered her to do as she was told.

Blaze looked at the man as he stood and the light brightened. She was amused when he started and looked around to see them. He turned back to her and her eyes met his. Blaze felt an odd sensation as their eyes met. She wondered how different it would be, being with a Two-legs?

They were all surprised when he held out his medallion and said, “I’d swear that this symbol was of your kind. What do you think?”

‘It’s him, my Dame, it’s him,’ she thought at her mother and immediately dropped and rolled to show her servitude.

The guardians growled, “No, it can’t be!”

The Grand Dame barked telling them to be quiet. To her pup, she sent, ‘You will do as I have ordered, but he is still just a man.’

Blaze barely registered her Dames last order as she only had eyes for the saviour. She watched as he slowly stepped down the two steps and off the dais. He approached her and dropped down so he was balanced on his toes, and gently scratched her behind one of her ears.

She whined in pleasure and thumped her long whip-like tail onto the ground. His touch was so pleasurable it made her squirm. For him she would become a Two-legs, if he kept doing that to her.

“Sit, my mighty friend,” he said softly and he then projected at her the image of sitting.

Blaze rolled back into a sitting position as the man stood. She then received an image of a tree with a sunny sky. She whined to tell him that she understood and headed to the fastest exit from the cavern, not even thinking of taking him to where they lived.

She took him through the room that they used for guard duty and out through the back tunnel. He sent her an image of a stream so she took him to the pool. She listened as he talked. She didn’t understand a lot of what he said. She did, however, understand that he believed he had come from his world through the magical portal attached to the ring.

She was surprised when he started removing his clothes and slipped into the water. She had never seen a naked man before. Her Dame had told her that unlike Dog males they didn’t sheath their cocks.

Dogs’ cocks were long and skinny and she knew when they formed their knot and they ejaculated, you were stuck with one for anything up to twenty minutes. Her friend, Twitch, said at first it could be quite painful and it was very uncomfortable if you moved around too much.

She had told her that many of the males pulled out before the knot formed and liked the females to lick and suck on their cocks to finish them off if they were just having sex for fun and not procreation. Blaze wondered if she would have to do that to a human.

She went down to the water and after getting a drink, she lay on a large slab of rock and watched the human bath and sing some very strange songs, while he did. She turned her head when a whistler started singing. The man stilled in the water and then started answering the flyer.

She had always considered flyers stupid creatures. They had so little to say. The only thing they were good for was scaring off prey unless they were it. She just wished they didn’t have so many feathers but the meat was succulent. She much preferred the slinky flyers. The skin could be tough but they tasted good too.

Longears were even better. You could pull the fluffy skin off them in one good rip. She licked her chops at the thought of a nice tasty longear. The skins came in handy too. The guardians, who spent some of their time in human form, would treat them and sew them together to make lovely soft beds from them.

Most guardians spent part of each day in their human form to do tasks they couldn’t do as a Dog. It was one of the things that worried her mother. She feared they would lose their civilized ways if they all reverted back to being Canine.

Blaze knew her mother considered herself more of a Shifter than a Canine.

Blaze was surprised the man made no effort to leave the area around the pool.

Once he got out, he dressed in short pants and a short-sleeved shirt. He did put his boots on and pulled a battered hat out of the backpack. He then extended his stave and started looking at the various slabs of stone. He walked closer to the cliff and climbed up on a ledge created by a giant slab near the waterfall. It was located at twice her height above the pool.

She was amazed when he got off of it and waved his stave at it. It lifted and moved up the cliff and then joined onto it with a slight angle so water and spray from the falls would be directed back at the pool. She watched as he collected other slabs and formed a large room.

On the front and the side away from the pool, he left open squares with wide shelves sitting over the top of them. She would call them viewers. The long rectangular one she assumed was the doorway. He then formed wide, shallow stairs down to the pool. He then sent several slabs inside and went into the room. Curiosity got the better of her and she had to go see what he was doing.

By the time she checked out the outside and gone in, he was standing in the middle of the room looking at his handiwork. On the side wall, he had created a long bench just above his waist height that ran its full length up to the oven in the corner in the front left-hand corner.

In the middle of the bench was a deep depression and water ran into it from what she believed was called a pipe and then out through a hole in the middle of the depression and through another pipe back into the cliff. He went and touched the top pipe and the water stopped.

Close to the other side wall and in the back corner, he had placed a large slab about knee height that she suspected was to be a sleeping platform. He indicated the open space and said, “I still need a table and chairs. Feel like going for a walk?”

Blaze knew from the image he sent her, what the items were and they were often made from wood, so she guessed what he wanted. She woofed and headed for the door.

By the time the sun was set, Blaze was stretched out on a very comfortable bed with a bulging tummy. They had spied a camla while collecting wood and the man who had said his name was Darcy, had shot it. He had nearly scared her next life out of her with the noise the weapon he called a pistol made.

She had no problem eating what he cooked for her, however. She had a preference for charred meat that still ran raw in the middle. He had kept asking her if it was cooked enough and she had shaken her head until he had it just perfect, so she woofed at him.

She had liked his laugh. He had even made her a big smooth stone bowl that he put the chunks of meat in and added a second that he put water in for her. When he had patted the bed and told her that she had to stay on her side and not hog it, she had been very amused.

She had been asleep for some hours when she woke in agony.

She thrashed and howled as she felt as if her body was being ripped apart.

Her Dame had said that the first time was always the worst. Once her body knew the new shape, she would be able to change faster into it and with little to no pain. Shifters normally learnt at a very young age to shift form. For her people, because they shifted from animal to human, it seemed much harder for them and they were older when they first shifted.

The triplets had performed magic to help change the daughters they had begotten on the Canines. They had picked the ones with the most promise and when they turned twenty-one, they changed them. The first-born was nearly always the strongest of the litter. This was how they set their daughters to alter in the centuries to come, long after their own deaths.

Blaze howled again as she felt her body twist and change and then lost consciousness.

Darcy had enjoyed his swim.

He didn’t feel like moving on. He suspected he would need to find a town in a week or two when his supplies ran out but for now, he just wanted to enjoy his freedom. Whatever it was that Lee had seen would happen or not.

After dressing in more comfortable clothes, he decided he could use the slabs of stone to make a nice little home. He could use the waterfall and huge tree on the southern corner to keep it cool during the day and a wood stove would warm it enough on the cooler nights.

He had to laugh when Tingko investigated every nook and cranny. He needed a bit more furniture and sent an image to Tingko. She woofed and they headed into the forest that butted up to the rocky area, which the stream flooded regularly.

He could put a shield on his home to protect it if the water ever went that high. He was sure that he had built it just up out of the flood zone and he could always create a passage into the cliff to get to it if he needed to, or he could widen the channel so the water didn’t come as high.

He wasn’t sure how often he would use this place but it was nice knowing he could escape here if he needed to. He had felt the shield over the mountain once he was outside. He was quite sure that it would let him in and out when he wished to come here.

He wasn’t sure who it was supposed to keep out but he was certain that he would eventually find out. While Earth and Nature, as far as plants went weren’t his strong suits, he was surprised by just what he could do.

Sean and Lee had made sure he could do basic spells such as manipulating the disciplines then went a little further, so he felt confident that he could supplement his existence for a few weeks. They had found a huge old tree that had not long crashed to the earth. He had broken it into movable sections and transported the logs he wanted back to the house.

He had returned to get the last one when Tingko sent him a picture of a camla. He quietly pulled his pistol and turned to where the animal was standing. It was a clean kill. The only problem was he had scared poor Tingko. He had patted her and rubbed her ear, as she seemed to like that, until she calmed down.

He transported the kill back to the house. He made a quick modification on the non-pool side of the cabin so he could hang the beast in the shade and protect it from predators. He then went back to get Tingko.

This time he transported the last section of wood and Tingko back to the cabin.

Sean had told Darcy that he was quite impressed with his telekinetic and teleportation abilities.

He had told Darcy that they were why he was able to manipulate earth and vegetation as well as he could. Lore and Psychic skills were related to the use of his brain and he had been living by his wits for years.

Darcy soon whipped up a table and some stools. He made a bench seat he could put padding on later for in front of the fire and used the soft pulpy woods to make a mattress for his bed. He found a spell to keep it soft enough for him and was pleased with his efforts.

He rearranged the corner shelves a little to make a meat locker and put preservation spells on it. The hide went over his bench seat and the thick fur was nice to sit on. He tossed his bedroll from his pack on the mattress and decided it would do for now.

He had decided he needed to sort out his pack. While removing the items, he had found a slim box similar to his magical box in there that he didn’t remember packing. When he had opened it, he had chuckled, “Bloody Lee.”

He didn’t unpack all of its contents just enough for a few days. At least he had bacon, eggs, coffee and sugar for breakfast, and some fresh and tinned vegetables to go with his steaks. He knew the box had a preservation spell on it and guessed that Lee had designed it as a portable larder for him.

He placed all of the crystals he collected, on his bench near the stove. He hadn’t been sure how conductive the stone bench was so he had cut some thin rings from one of his sections of the tree to put under them. He decided they made great tablemats too, so he had cut some extras and thicker ones to be cutting boards.

He’d had fun cooking the camla steaks for Tingko.

Darcy worked on a few other projects before bed.

He made some lights after he sectioned some of the thicker crystals into large gem sized pieces. Sean had taught him how to do this. He had noticed that Lee had even tossed a dozen handy sized bags into his larder box, so he kept one of the bigger bags for the long crystals and broke up several of the smaller pieces and filled a smaller pouch that he could keep hooked to a loop on his pants.

As an afterthought, he made his bicep-cuffs appear and removed them. He added another eight crystal gems to each and put them back on. He smiled at the boosted effect. Now all he needed was a woman so he could really charge them up.

He stripped off and crawled into bed. He patted the other side and told Tingko that was her side and not to hog the bed. She jumped up onto the bed and stretched out on her side. He rolled to face her back and gently stroked down her ribs, as he nodded off to sleep.

He was awoken several hours later to Tingko howling and thrashing around on the bed. He told the lights to turn on and watched in horrified fascination as her body changed. He had seen Lee and Sean change form but not like this. They had done it so he knew the signs if a person were attempting to use it as a means of escape.

Poor Tingko, however, was not having a fun time. She was not doing it as fast or smoothly as Lee had. Tingko howled and it changed into a strangled cry as her muzzle receded into her face. Darcy put his hands on her and said the strongest healing spell he knew. He added in a couple of others in the hope they helped her.

He watched as the muscles and bones in her arms and shoulders altered to take on a woman’s form. He could see her front toes extend to become long fingers and her claws receded. Her skin blurred as the hair receded to leave her skin smooth and hair free on her body but longer on her head.

Her muscles spasmed, as her torso and legs changed. Her back paws took on the shape of human feet. She arched and then shuddered violently and dropped into unconsciousness, while still lying away from him. Darcy sucked in a breath as he looked at the woman who now lay beside him.

“Bugger me, I’m in serious trouble,” he told the limp form beside him. He wasn’t surprised that his cock got hard, as she was exquisite. Shifters normally had white-blonde hair with streaks of a dominant colour in it. She, however, had jet black hair with one thick streak of white-blonde that hung over her right ear.

Shifters also tended to have pale skin with a tone that matched their hair that he often thought of as pastel shades. Her skin had the paler tone like his but if he was a flat white, then she was a hot chocolate.