It was morning and a lone log from a young tree was being worked on by Taramo with Austalir and two of the locals observing. The latter were woodsmen who felled and stripped the log of bark and branches and they were there to provide some strength in numbers. The moss wolves were unwilling to attack groups more than two unless it was nighttime, and it was currently effective since they were at the border of the woods and still unmolested by the animals.

  The log was had glyphs burnt onto the surface to let Taramo's spell flow into the inside easier. The spell turned the log into a very basic type of wand.

  As a wand it helped project spells from intentions but this one was only given a single spell. Projecting a filament of mana designed to stick to wisps and animals that were bonded with wisps, magical animals. The mosswolves had to have some magical abilities so they would fall into the latter category.

  A single filament wouldn't give much help but this spell, since it was so simple, wouldn't need the entire length of the log to work. It only needed a few inches of it.

  Once the spell was properly settled, after about an hour's effort, The surface glyps expanded and the whole surface of the log darkened as it was burnt. Then Taramo went and pulled off a forearm's length off the end of the log, giving the log to Austalir to observe.

  "And they're supposed to be used together?" Austalir gingerly brushed at the burnt surface. The char fell off quite easily.

  "Yes. Most people don't want to have synchronized wands since they have a limited range and efficacy. I made one for a farmer once to simplify the crop harvesting but it was harder than hiring more hands to work."

  "Then why are you using this method?" Austalir asked, "Wouldn't the whole thing be wasted if one of them broke?"

  "Yes," Taramo finished splitting the log, ending up with twenty 'wands', "but it's well within my abilities. Most enchantments need expensive materials and are expected to last long. I'm not planning for this to last a year, much less dozens of them. I also don't want to spend a whole day working on this. Here," He gave another length to Austalir and one to each of the woodsmen "they'll need to be hand brushed but they shouldn't need expert finesse."

  Taramo dusted off half of the wands by the time the other three finished the one they were given. He polished the rest off rather quickly and they started planting them.

  The wands were stuck into the ground, each a pace apart and dotting the border of the cleared land the abbey was in.

  "Now we get to see how smart these wolves are." Taramo sat after saying this and closed his eyes, "If you want to watch do it from the abbey walls. I need to appear vulnerable."

  The others left, the woodsmen voiced some disagreement.

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  "Let him do it," Austalir insisted, "He'll have some backups and could probably wrestle one of the wolves if he had to."

  The secondary protection that Taramo set around himself hung like a thin mist about him. It would be noticed by the beasts but hopefully they would still attack. Most of his effort was put into trying to sense vibrations in the earth. He didn't believe that the wolves left any and wanted to be sure.

  After half an hour of waiting and doing nothing more than practicing his vibration sensing spells Taramo was launched into the air like a toddler double bounced on a trampoline. The snapping jaws of a wolf barely missed his ankle and as Taramo reached the height of his throw, four stories, he cast something the size of a burning coal and sent it down to the three wolves that had emerged where he was sitting.

  Idly he reflected that there was no disruption in the grass from them emerging, which was interesting to behold, but with the shield he threw in front of himself he was thrown seven stories up when his fireball went off. He flipped his shield around to slow his fall and drifted towards the ground, or what was left of it.

  There was a crater in the earth as large as a house and smoldering grass for three times that distance. Two of the wolves were charred and dismembered by the shockwave and one of the wands stuck in the ground was wiggling frantically. Following the specific directive of the spell the others turned themselves towards the wand that had captured the wolf and the other filaments joined the first, though Taramo couldn't see it directly given it was happening underground.

  The woodsmen were more than a little surprised and most of the abbey's inhabitants had run outside to see what caused the explosion. Taramo walked to the wiggling wand and firmly grasped it. He had to use magic to force the wand up and drag the wolf from the ground, taking all the earth up with it.

  "It's a voluntary action, interesting." The wolf struggled and snapped at him but it was completely trapped in the merged capture spells.

  "Now for the experiments." The rest of the wands dislodged themselves from the earth relatively easily and floated alongside Taramo as he returned to the enclosed wall of outside the Abbey. A potted plant waited eagerly for the arrival of the bound wolf.

  "Barely damaged. It's a good thing that there was one of them smart enough to run." Ariwyn was tactful enough to not do a vivisection while the children were watching them, only poking and prodding the things with mana.

  None of the people had much love for the animals since they'd lost an aspiring farmer, three of their hunters, and a child who'd decided to play in the woods alone, the latter having been picked off first when the wolves weren't present.

  Taramo still disallowed the vivisection during the daylight but kept the wolf tied and under Ariwyn's supervision. If she was able to dominate them she would have a useful body to incorporate with her species of vines.

  The moss on the wolves was bonded with the creature in a sort of symbiosis that seemed obligate for the moss. Ariwyn was also able to locate the brain region that caused them to melt into the dirt. They were able to phase through earth, fine sand, with the limit being gravel. They could pass through clay, though very slowly.

  She was unable to dominate the animal, though not for lack of trying. There were some thin needles made of iron that were embedded in the skull and forelegs of the animal that had some weaves that forced obedience already. Trying to override or remove the spell would result in the activation of an explosion rune, killing the animals. It could only be undone by the person who set them and as Taramo looked out to the edge of the woods and saw a burnt husk of a wolf covered in moss with burning dots in the eyes he could probably believe the dominator was a necromancer.

  And not the friendly kind.