Chapter 87
On the seventh day, they discovered yet another potential use for the energy that Nat was moving around inside of her. However, the discovery this time was a complete fluke. Natalie had been moving it around, getting practice at stretching it to cover a larger surface area with less. That way she could hopefully transform more efficiently. While she was doing that, Bryden's timer finally ran out. He was able to leave the Soulscape once again. Without giving any heads up, he left right through Natalie's chest, which happened to be where she was currently circulating her power. As a result, when Bryden came out, he stumbled and fell over, as if he was needing to relearn how to walk. Which, after taking a look at his body, everyone knew that was exactly the problem he had.
When he exited the Soulscape, he was not in his wolf form, nor did he seem to be made of the green mist. Instead, he closely resembled the form of a werewolf, similar to what Natalie looked like when she shifted in Lethbridge. While everyone slowly went up to him to figure out what happened, Natalie stayed seated on the ground, feeling drained. Now she knew why all of the canines seemed to be in half-human forms in that dream of hers. She could now have them take humanoid forms. Just in a extremely draining manner. The energy inside of her had acted as a sort of veil just underneath her skin. When Bryden exited, he went from the depths of her being, through this veil, and out into the world. A good amount of the energy felt drained from the endeavor, as if he had taken a bunch with him. However, she was glad to notice that it still passively regenerated, and at no less of a speed than it was prior.
That was when the unthinkable happened. "Ow. Why did my legs stop working?" Bryden asked as he started to pick himself up. Shannon gasped, as did most of the other onlookers, Nat being too exhausted to move. Bryden had just spoken, and not in their minds, or in the usual barks and growls that the canines did. In pure, unadulterated English.
"Bryden, you can talk now?" Shannon asked, finally breaking everyone's silence. Bryden stopped moving for a second, and turned his head over to look at Shannon, eyes wide as he took in her words.
"You could understand me?" He asked her, shocked beyond belief. To this, Shannon slowly started nodding. It was then that he was fully snapped out of his reverie of being out in the world once more. Looking down at his own body, Bryden slowly used one of his hands to investigate his new body. It felt bigger, stronger, and far more limber. However, as he tried to stand once more, he swayed on his feet before taking a knee. He had spent his whole life walking around on four legs, to suddenly try and walk on two was proving to be quite the challenge.
When they all saw what he was now capable of doing, and how much more intimidating he felt to their honed sense's, the entire pack turned to Natalie with stars in their eyes. Those however, quickly faded as soon as they saw her. It looked as if she had just run three marathons back to back. Her face was pale, sweat dripping down the exposed parts of her body, and her breathing was ragged. Slowly though, as her energy came back to her, colour came back to her and her breath stabilized more and more. While all of the canines wanted to be able to learn how to walk around on two legs, they did not want to put more strain on Natalie. Just seeing how she looked, they could tell it was draining to do that at the moment. Not that it helped when Bryden came charging through in the densest part of the energy veil she had going on inside her body.
When Nat finally recovered enough to be able to move, she got up and started to help Bryden get the hang of walking on two paws. Interestingly enough, his hind legs stayed mostly the same, where as his frontal legs changed into beefy arms with hands. His fingers tipped with claws, and his fur maintaining the exact same coloration. His head showed the least change, looking almost identical to before he shifted. For the next few hours, Nat helped guide him through walking while she practiced thinning out the energy. The big question to her was how much of the energy did she need to use so that they could successfully transform into these lycanthrope forms? While she was not up to it immediately, she did want to do some testing on it later. For now, she had a bipedal canine who was having issues standing up.
As the hours passed and it approached dinner time, he had finally gotten the hang of standing on two feet. While he required focus to move, he could also walk around at a slow pace. Seeing now as a good time for a break from his practice, Nat asked if he would not mind helping run a few tests for her. Gladly accepting, she followed her directions and went back into the Soulscape. Once there, he found that he had a few more options available to him. While in the Soulscape, he could now freely shift between the two forms. Apparently, the form was named inside the Soulscape as an empowered form. This meant it probably required the energy itself to instigate the change in the first place. This was further confirmed by him exiting back in his normal quadrupedal form later on, when Nat did not have the energy veil up inside of her. After a few more tests, just to make sure none of their findings were flukes, the entire pack had supper and called it for the night. As the sun set on the seventh day, Nat had all pregnant canines stay the night inside the Soulscape. After all, tomorrow was their expected due date.
Huge thanks to my Elder Wolves Jake, Viktor, Nikolas, Saganatsu, Eeleater, Eric, Corgi, Lachlan, Adam, John, Nicholas, Jacob, Onean, Erudual, Hades, Neal, Juuso, Sebastian, Sir Hellington, and Kevin for supporting me and my writing! Remember that I keep Patreon ten chapters ahead at all times. Our next goal on Patreon will be getting up to 50 patrons, which I will then spend more time each month writing some side stories and shorts that show other perspectives throughout my stories!
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