Sasha was a study in contradictions, making observing her as we travelled a fascinating experience. On one hand, she was intensely curious, which manifested in her constant desire to explore the world around us, though only in a somewhat limited radius, using her own senses. In that, I could easily see myself in her actions, just that she was using her senses to explore the physical world, sniffing the flowers so to say, while I was much more interested in the non-physical world, the different magical planes all around us, be it the Astral River, the Shadows or something entirely different, I wanted to know what was there and how it interacted with the physical reality we inhabited.

  On the other hand, Sasha was quite obviously skittish, nervous at being left behind or alone, unwilling to brave this unknown world without the safety provided by our group. That manifested in a desire to remain with at least one of us at all times and a fairly obvious preference for the group to remain together, to the point that I noticed her getting slightly agitated if one of us stepped into the bushes to take care of some personal business. The moment somebody deliberately moved away from the group, she got nervous, a trait we were trying to break slowly, without causing her undue anguish.

  But our latest addition to the group wasn’t just amusing to observe; she also served as an experimental subject, though I made sure to keep my experimentation quite tame and subtle. Something I had noticed during Sasha’s initial captivity was that she seemed to enjoy drinking conjured water, a trait I decided to take advantage of by infusing the water she got with a fair amount of Astral Power, almost as if I was donating blood for Lia’s meals. The big difference was that I never tried to actively influence Lia by using that vector, at least not beyond our initial bonding all those months ago, but with Sasha, I wanted to see if I could use the consumption of my Astral Power as a vector to influence her Body and maybe even her Mind and Soul. For that, I was now consciously adding Ice Astral Power into the water I conjured for her, with the added benefit that it chilled the water, making it quite pleasant to drink while the days were constantly getting warmer.

  Those warmer days caused another interesting development with our two fur-clad companions, bringing some amusement to all three of us. Silva had, during the winter, grown a thick, warm coat of fluffy fur, but now, as the days were getting warm, and even hot, she was shedding that fur like crazy, giving her an itchy sensation she repeatedly complained about.

  So, the obvious solution was to conjure a comb and get rid of her remaining winter coat. Brushing her out loosened enough fur to make an entirely new dog. I could only stare in amazement at the sheer volume of fluff Silva had been carrying around.

  Once that was done, I realised Sasha was acting exactly the same way, so she received the same treatment, demonstrating a fair amount of trust in us. I only realised a little later that grooming behaviour is an important social impulse in primates, helping to bond a social group together. So, by helping Sasha get rid of her likely itchy and warm fur, we were showing her that she was part of the group while also making her more comfortable. It was definitely a win for us.

  But adding Sasha to our group wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Given our continued aversion to the sun, maybe saying that there was a little too much sunshine would be more appropriate. Luckily, Sasha could function during the night. Her night vision was better than a normal human’s, though not on the same level as the night vision of any other member of our party, leaving her a little disadvantaged.

  Her level also caused a somewhat strange effect, where she became the default target of any beast trying to attack us, at least those that weren’t scared off by the sheer power the rest of us could radiate out. It was a good thing that the vast majority of beasts had instincts sharp enough to recognise that attacking us was death, with a vanishingly small chance of success. However, that habit only worked while one of the stronger members of the party was with Sasha, meaning she automatically preferred to stick with us, leading to a few fairly embarrassing moments. My mind continued to struggle with the strange dichotomy of seeing her as both a human and an animal, ascribing traits of either to her and switching how I viewed her seemingly at random.

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  At some moments, especially when she was playing with Silva, I readily watched the pair with a contented feeling as if I was watching two puppies play with each other or a puppy and its mother. But at other times, especially when it came to bodily functions that forced the near-human anatomy under her fur in the foreground, I felt intense embarrassment. It was quite strange and incredibly annoying but so far, my mind had been unable or unwilling to stick a label on her and keep said label.

  Which is why I decided to try if I might be able to improve her intelligence. One possibility I considered was carving the required runes directly into her flesh, similar to the way I had experimented on Mundus or like the runes I had used to permanently improve a few people around Jademoon Tower, just with a different focus. It would be interesting to see if raw attributes could permanently change a being’s mental ability and thus their mental state, though I had barely any idea how I would be able to measure that.

  Or if the attribute ‘Intelligence’ had any actual bearing on the sapience of a given being. Was I somehow ten times ‘more sapient’ than a normal human? How would I even go about measuring such a thing? It wasn’t as if there was some sort of scale. Before the Change, it had been easy; humans were people and everything else was animals.

  Some might have differentiated along a gradient consisting of companion, domesticated, and wild animals, though that gradient was somewhat murky and purely defined on an individual level. After all, there was little biological difference between a wolf, a dog and a dingo, but one was a generally beloved companion animal while one of the others invoked an almost instinctual fear to the point that they had been hunted to near extinction in large parts of the world. But which one was more sapient was impossible to tell, at least for me.

  And now, that impossibility extended to what might be all animals. Silva was an excellent example; she was easily as smart as quite a few humans, but when looking at her, nobody would be able to tell. Sure, she had some equipment, but that equipment was obviously made by humanoids, using our incredibly useful opposable thumbs and tools, not something she had crafted for herself. Then, when she came into contact with other dogs, those dogs demonstrated that she could communicate with them, guiding and teaching them, as she had with the Army of Dog near Apple Gate Farm.

  Now, with Sasha, I was just as confused. She had been human, the Change had Shattered her, and then her soul had regenerated or healed to the point that she now was Sasquatch. Humans, obviously, were sapient, Shattered, to the best of my understanding, could barely be considered alive while Sasquatch seemed to be closer to animals than humans, at least from what we had been able to observe. So, how did a being turn from one to the other? There obviously was a process, but whether that process involved the attribute labelled ‘Intelligence’ was an entirely different question. Even if it did, how exactly that involvement worked was unknown and would have to be figured out by experimentation.

  Lia was a similar case, though some of her memories from her human life remained, she simply chose to disassociate from them, she had just pushed them away in favour of reinventing herself.

  Just thinking about this was giving me a small headache, while the implications were quite scary. I knew that there was magic to increase or decrease attributes, and I could even do so with a combination of Darkness and Blood Magic. Possibly Mind Magic, if I wanted to target intelligence. Did that mean I could curse a human to become an animal?

  Momentary images of that Lycantroll we had faced in the White Mountains sprang to mind, a creature robbed of all reason and intelligence by a curse, leaving it nothing but a beast to be put down. It was an incredibly scary idea, as it went far beyond just killing a person, especially as I didn’t know, maybe couldn’t know, if the human mind was still in there, just unable to overpower the instincts driving the body.

  This would be something we had to be incredibly careful with, as the implications were staggering.