Chapter 2
He woke to the sounds of birds and distant animal calls. His thoughts were sluggish. His body felt tired, weak, thirsty, and he had a nasty headache pounding in his head. Crawling out of his tent, he got up which felt him a bit dizzy. The experience was made worse by the apparent sensitivity to light that was stabbing at his eyes and even the sweet chirping birds sounded too loud. He was having trouble concentrating and thinking clearly.
'Did I drink too much last night?' he thought groggily.
Then it all came back - The reincarnation, the NZT pill. The merging of three different people into one
'My brain is back to normal' he realized 'Thank the old gods that I at least got to keep the merging'
'Eat and drink first,' He muttered as he shuffled towards his food rations and water skin 'everything else later'
After eating some beef jerky with stale bread and drinking some water he started feeling a bit better. He thought about all the brilliant plans that he had come up with and the modern twenty first century innovations he was sure he could recreate. Now they all felt impossible!
'I wish I had some parchment, ink and quill last night' he thought morosely then another idea sparked 'Wait, I don't need that when I can simply replicate the effects of my enhanced brain with my bio tinkering powers'
He concentrated on his brain and envisioned it. Next, he recalled all the biological changes it went through when he took the NZT pill and used his power to slowly change his brain back how it was last night,
'Hope it get back to its wonderful enhanced super genius state' he thought concentrating.
Instantly the world snapped into focus, everything felt more vibrant and every little bit of thing was bombarding him with tidbits of information. Every color was sharper, every sound was clearer, every scent layered with nuance. Information poured into his mind like a flood. He laughed joyfully, startling the horse a little.
"I'm back. Luna" he said out loud grinning like a lunatic as he approached the horse and patted her to calm her down "I just made myself a super genius. Permanently."
The horse snorted at being startled and resume eating.
After spending a couple of minutes simply enjoying his enhanced brain and subsequent heightened awareness while absently patting the horse and using biokinter powers to explore the intricacies of horse physiology, his thoughts turned to his current predicament and what he had planned to do.
"OK. girl" He said to the horse" I'm going to see if I caught something in the traps."
Grabbing his weapon belt, he left his makeshift camp and started to walk towards the traps he had laid last night.
"Gotta catch 'em all" He hummed the Pokémon theme as he imagined what animals he could find and make them his companions.
'I hope i get a shadow cat' he thought 'It would be the best choice for my circumstances'
The first few traps were empty. Moving further away he found a little marmot.
His encyclopedic memory instantly provided him information on the animal
'A burrowing and hibernating animal. It's not very useful. Still useful as food' he thought as he grabbed the animal and simply switched off its brain, leaving its body in a vegetative state ' it will keep it alive longer and give me fresh game meat. I Could also use its living flesh for bio tinkering.'
An idea struck him.
'O wonder…If I can warg into an animal while also altering their brain to be accepting of the warging, I could instantly tame whichever animal I want. No resistance and no wasting time taming and earning its trust'
In the next traps he found a rabbit and a ptarmigan bird, both were also rendered brain dead. He tied all the animals to a rope to carry them and moved on.
The next traps were also empty and a few were broken out by stronger animals.
It was when he was starting to feel a little disappointed that he came upon his next trap and caught sight of an arctic fox trapped within and his disappointment vanished.
"Hello there" he said as he carefully got closer to the growling animal and crouched beside it "well aren't you a handsome little fox. You will do nicely"
He lunged at the growling fox and grabbed it by the scruff of its neck for which he got scratched deeply but he easily healed himself with a thought
"Let's see if this crazy idea works, "he said to the fox as he carefully modified its brain chemistry to stop being scared of him and be obedient to him so that when he tried to warg with the animal, it would happen successfully. Seeing the fox calm down he looked deeply into its eyes and started warging with it.
Feeling a link established with the fox he pushed through and found out that his consciousness slipped into the fox's brain rather smoothly. Turning the fox's head towards his human body, he saw himself looking back at his human body with milky white eyes. He blinked through two sets of eyes — human and animal — at once.
His body stood there, eyes milky white, while he looked back from the fox's perspective.He could feel and control both bodies simultaneously and effortlessly
'Interesting' he mumbled
Unlike before when Erik had first warged with the horse and had lost control of his human body, this time he had control of both bodies. He let go of his fox and watched as he effortlessly controlled the fox's body. He got up and started walking around to test if he still had full control of his human body which as it turned out he did,
'It seems the brain enhancement allows me greater processing power to control both bodies and deal with multiple sensory input easily.' He thought as he took out his sword and took a few practice swings at an imaginary enemy all the while making the fox run around and sniff everything it found interesting.
'Another difference is that there is no bleed over of emotions from the fox. I can still sense what it's thinking but its thoughts and emotions have no effect on me' he concluded 'Now let's add another element to this experiment by controlling my horse as well'
Mentally reaching out to the link he had with his horse, he took control of her body easily. Ignoring her surprise, he looked through her eyes at his makeshift camp.
"Excellent! I can control multiple animals without any loss of function to my body and there is no apparent decrease in efficiency while doing so" He exclaimed "Let's keep the links running and see how long i can keep it going"
Putting his sword back into his scabbard, he sent the fox to some traps while he walked to inspect the last few ones.
After finding some lemmings and some small red tufted birds that he previously didn't know the name of but his enhanced mind dug it out of a fleeting memory
'Redpolls' he thought amazed with his enhanced brains to recall knowledge 'not very useful for warging. I'll keep it feed the fox'
Speaking of the fox it yipped excitedly as he himself was quite happy with the last find.
Walking to where the fox was looking, he saw that his trap had ensnared a raven.
"Oh, you will do nicely," he remarked as he grabbed the struggling raven with some difficulty earning a few bleeding fingers in the process. He then repeated the process of mind alteration and warging.
Similar to the previous experience he saw and felt everything from the bird's point of view. It was also in pain as the trap had fractured its left wing. He quickly healed it and threw it in the air.
Now he was seeing the world from the perspective of three different animals and himself and one of them was even flying!
Flying was exhilarating — the wind under his wings, the vast forest spreading below, every movement effortless.
'Amazing' He thought as he saw and felt the world for the raven's perspective 'It should feel weird but somehow flying feels completely natural. Must be the raven's instincts'
He felt the wind whipping through his feathers and the forest spreading out below him. He enjoyed the feeling of freedom that flying provided, a sense of being untethered from the worries of the world below
'As long as it was brief, anyway'. He thought as he forced himself to focus back to his current task 'Don't want to lose myself to the almost addictive freedom and sensation'
'I need another warg to compare my abilities with 'he thought remembering lore, statistics, and numbers with machine precision — but dismissed the thought with a sigh.
'But what are my chances of running into another warg? How many wargs are there north of the wall? In the books Bloodraven mentioned that only one man in a thousand is born a skin changer and only one skin changer in a thousand can be a greenseer. During the War of the Five Kings, Mance Rayder led a large force of Free Folk who attempted to break through the Wall defended by The Night's Watch. It was a force of over 100,000 people, from hundreds of tribes beyond the Wall.' he recalled perfectly from a conversation he had overheard in passing 'That means there can be only a few hundred alive at this time. So the chances of meeting them in this vast tundra with such low statistics' are highly unlikely' he thought sadly 'Ah well! I will keep an eye out. Who know? Maybe I'll get lucky. Either way it's not the priority right now'
Finished with the traps, he returned to his camp with his new companions. Sitting down in his camp bed he looked at the raven, fox and Luna, the horse.
'Now that the warging abilities have been tested, let's try some bio-tinkering on my companions' he mused as he called the fox and had it lie down in front of him. Placing one hand on it and the other on the brain-dead animals, he concentrated on the fox's body.
'Hm. Adult Male. Young. Excellent senses, not messing with that. Musculature similar to dogs with difference in pectoral and forelimb muscles resulting in better digging, climbing and quick maneuvering.' He thought as his powers allowed him to see the its whole body in a sort of 3d holographic way in his mind 'body designed for ambush hunting smaller prey and not designed for combat. Let's add some denser muscles for more strength' he concentrated and used the bio mass of the brain-dead animals and converted completely to fox muscles down to the last DNA strand' Next increase lung and heart capacity to support more muscles. Increase metabolism for providing extra energy at the cost of eating more. Now for bones, strengthen them by weaving carbon fiber strands in and around the bones. More carbon fiber mesh under the skin making it harder to pierce aaand.... Done. Now let's test these changer' he thought as he ordered he fox to move around him while still keeping his hand on it.
The Fox didn't look much different from the outside but inside was another story. It was a little bit stronger, tougher and faster.
Let's send them out for some hunting and scouting' he thought he sent the raven to circle around the camp a bit to see if anything interesting or potentially dangerous was around.
After a few moments the raven spotted a few more rodents so he sent both the fox and the raven after them to grab their meal. Their coordinated effort led to two successful catches that they ate ravenously.
He himself felt didn't feel tired from using his bio tinker powers so he started bio tinkering with the left-over braindead animal mass.
'It's not enough mass to change myself or Luna' He hummed as he turned their leftovers into a reddish slurry type material 'maybe a weapon? '
His enhanced brain started to rapidly search through all the combined memories and knowledge for a biological weapon ending up choosing stink pellets.
He started making pellets made from some rubbery skin that popped on impact. Inside the pellet he molded the bio slurry into skunk spray, the nastiest smelling liquid he had knowledge of.
He started to break camp and pack everything while his thoughts were on the next step of his plans.
'With these animals and their much sharper senses I can scout ahead' he thought 'This will help me avoid dangers and also look for future opportunities be it humans or more interesting animals to warg and add to my team. I wonder how many animals I can warg with? The stories normally had a single animal while the character of Waramyr six skin could do six.' he thought as he loaded his packed stuff onto Luna 'so theoretically I should be able to control six at least'
'Alright let's go and make some new friends' he thought as he summoned the animals to scout his surroundings all the while he concentrated on his plans.