Taylor and the Twisted Game Part 11 (Patreon)

[Neat!] Shaper squealed as she examined the 'biology' that allowed the four legged animals to surround their hooves with fire and breathe fire.

'And the voices are back,' Taylor mused as she watched Amy pet the large felsteed's neck. "Anything useful?"

Amy grinned as she headed back to where Skitter, Sophia and Chevalier were waiting for her near the warp in space that led to the walkway that would take them to the room with the giant wolf. "I might have an idea how to give people or pets the ability to breathe fire."

"I know powers are random but I get phasing and you get the ability to rewrite biology and give everyone powers, how is that remotely fair?" Sophia grumbled.

Amy snorted. "It comes with strings, no one is going to call you in the middle of the night because a couple of drunk idiots crashed into a bus filled with cheerleaders or because the Merchants OD'd the girl they kidnapped."

"You'd probably get less calls if you charged money or maybe you just wouldn't care about being woken up in the middle of the night if you were making a basket filled with cash," Sophia suggested then stepped through the twisted tunnel that Missy had created that would take them to the walkway.

"Yeah, take that up with Brandish, she considers taking money for the use of powers irresponsible or some other bit of stupidity," Amy grumbled as she followed Sophia.

Chevalier followed Skitter through the warp in space. "To be fair, making money as an independant cape is a legal nightmare."

"It almost makes me glad that I don't have powers," Taylor said as they headed into the tower where Noelle and the rest of the group were waiting for them with half a dozen dark blue furred worgen. "New friends?"

"Yeah, they're immune to shadow damage. I figured Amy might have some luck copying their abilities, if not we'll send them against the undead," Noelle explained.

"Do we get hazard pay for this?" one of the worgen asked warily.

"You get paid?" Sophia asked sarcastically.

One of the worgen laughed. "We're getting paid one way or another."

"Yeah, we're paying you," Noelle assured her new minions, figuring it was a small price to pay if Amy could figure out how to make the group immune to shadow damage. "I checked the giant wolf with the beast lore ability, we can't tame it but we might be able to tame a copy."

"It's worth a shot," Taylor agreed, figuring the wolf would be large enough to work as a combat mount for Admin's rider class in addition to her pet.

"Hell yeah," Sophia agreed as they headed up the stairs.

"Do we have a plan if it doesn't work?" Chevalier asked.

"Sure, we grab a felsteed until we can find something better," Taylor replied as they reached the entrance to the room with the giant wolf. "You're up."

"On the off chance the wolf gets past me, don't let it eat anyone," Noelle told her minions then charged into the circular room with the huge wolf that was taller than her at the shoulders. Unfortunately for her plans for holding it in place, leverage was a thing, it had four legs instead of two and it outweighed her by a lot.

Sophia shivered slightly as she watched the giant wolf bite into Noelle's arm and toss her around like a ragdoll for a couple of seconds before an identical huge wolf appeared out of thin air and lunged at the boss with a snarl. "How the hell are we supposed to tame that without getting gnawed on?"

"That's what healers are for," Amy said sarcastically as she poked the worgen she was standing next to on the shoulder with her finger so she could try to figure out how to upgrade the group's shadow resistance.

[Mad science!] Shaper said enthusiastically as she looked at the creature's genetics and compared it to the other worgen her host had touched.

Admin watched the worgen to make sure he didn't try to attack Amelia.

Taylor shook her head, trying to ignore the voice whispering something that sounded like 'mad science'. She turned to look at Missy. "Can you make a maze out of folded space?"

"Maybe if we lure the copies to the courtyard," Missy mused, fairly sure she could pull off a maze with enough space or at least something that would slow it down enough to matter.

Chevalier frowned as another two giant wolves appeared out of thin air. "How many copies can she make?"

"I don't have a limit." Noelle punched the boss, fracturing its skull and putting it out of its misery, managing to look fairly badass before her wolf minions started licking her face, causing her to sputter. "Are they useful?"

Taylor cast her Beast Lore spell and grinned at the result. "It's tameable and immune to stun, sleep and polymorph effects, nice."

Noelle grinned when the three giant wolves jumped on Arugal's void walkers when they appeared, quickly tearing them apart before they could attack the group.

"You realize that's bullshit, right?" Sophia asked, knowing that most of the hunters running around would kill for a pet that was immune to a bunch of status effects.

"Which part?" Noelle asked with amusement as she picked up the hide cloak that had appeared next to the boss and the pair of bracers that dropped off one of the void walkers. She tossed the bracers to Chevalier. "Here, they have decent stamina and nothing else."

Chevalier touched the bracers to his heritage bracers and used his power to combine the stamina bonus from the new bracers with what he had, replacing the less useful stamina bonus and increasing the armor it gave him by 'merging' the bracers together. "Thanks, that increased my bracer's stamina and armor by a decent amount."

"You're welcome," Noelle replied then turned to look at Void. "Don't worry, we'll find better gear in the Scarlet Monastery or through blacksmithing."

"I'm not worried about it," Void assured her. "I'd rather have strength and stamina than just stamina."

Taylor frowned slightly as she walked into the room and noticed a glowing book on one of the shelves. She walked over and picked up the purple book, the glow fading as soon as it was in her hand. "The Book of Ur," she muttered as she focused on the item and read the description, realizing it was a book about worgen and their twisted dimension.

"What did you find?" Missy asked.

"A book on worgen, I got another point of archeology," Taylor replied as she paged through the book that actually looked like a real book, complete with diagrams. "They spent a lot of effort on this game, it's an actual book."

"Weird, why would you spend more time on a porn knock-off than the developers did on the real game?" Missy asked.

Void shook his head. "It wasn't like this in the beta, that book only pops up for a quest and you barely get any information about it. Not to mention they didn't have archeology."

"Myrddin would love this," Chevalier muttered.

"How long are you going to need to upgrade the wolves with the shadow resistance?" Noelle asked as she quickly skinned the giant wolf.

"Anywhere from a couple of minutes to hours, to it's not happening without shenanigans," Amy replied as she started trying to figure out which bit of magical DNA gave the Shadowfang darksouls their immunity to shadow damage. "It's complicated, wolves aren't worgen and I don't have a doctorate in magical genetics."

[We'll get there!] Shaper exclaimed enthusiastically as she got to work sorting everything.

[Best of luck], Admin told Shaper, hoping she could figure it out as that would give Taylor the best chance of 'surviving' the world with her sanity intact.

Noelle turned to look at Admin. "Can you summon the wolves and the minions or are we going to have to take the long way to Taylor's mansion?"

[I'll have to run some tests], Admin admitted.

"She said she'd have to run some tests," Taylor offered as she walked over to the shelf with the alchemy apparatuses and started seeing what was worth looting.

"In that case, we'll deal with the rest of the bosses while you're working." Noelle looked at the large wolves. "Sit and stay."

The wolves flopped down on the floor, causing the stuff on the shelves to rattle.

"That works," Noelle replied as she headed for the door.

Amy didn't notice the smile on her face as she started making some tweaks and improving the wolf's health, figuring she'd start with the basics before doing anything drastic.

0o0o0

Vicky glared at the group of dwarves that were threatening her with swords, muskets and future consequences if she didn't join their guild. "Let me get this straight, you're going to harass and annoy the shit out of me because I grabbed the Master Artisan perk?"

The leader of the group of dwarven crafters smirked at her. "Only if you don't join or pay protection, the Trade Guild isn't an unreasonable guild."

"Eh, I'll let you know when I actually make something," Vicky replied as she set her hand on the back of the stone bench she was standing next to.

"Does that mean you're willing to pay the protection money?" one of the dwarves asked smugly.

Vicky could almost hear Amy shouting, 'Vicky, no!' as she picked the bench up and smashed it into the group, breaking limbs and ripping one of the 'unfortunate' dwarves in half as she didn't bother to hold back. She twisted and brought the stone bench up to defend herself when another group of dwarves opened fire on her from where they'd been 'hiding' further down the street.

She tossed the bench at the group to 'distract' them then charged the group, crossing the distance and punching the only survivor of her distraction before he could shoot her, splattering the remains of his head on the wall. 'So much for not making enemies.'

"What the hell?" one of the bystanders blurted.

Vicky turned to look at the girl wearing a similar linen 'dress' as she flipped the mental switch she was fairly sure would summon her loot collection pet, causing an adorable miniature purple dragon to appear out of thin air. "They tried to kill me."

"Fucking capes," a large man muttered before walking off into the shadows, deciding that she wasn't someone he wanted to mess with even if she was gorgegous.

Vicky glanced towards the man complaining about capes as he vanished into an alley then turned to watch her dragon as it flew over to the closest dwarf, grabbed his bag of holding and tossed it in its bag, causing the dwarf's bag to vanish and reappear on his hip looking empty. "At least they have something worth looting."

"You should leave before the guards kill you for causing trouble," the girl suggested.

Vicky stared at the black haired human girl. "They kill people for defending themselves?"

The girl took a couple of steps back when she heard shouts in the distance. "They don't care who started it, if you fight in the city against another player they'll kill you if they can catch you."

"Lovely," Vicky muttered as she flew up to the roof, making a mental note to leave the city as soon as she could. 'I should have taken a better look at the wiki,' she mused as she mentally poked her collection of mental switches, trying to get a better idea of what they did. 'That's a stamina boost and that's a healing spell.'

She snickered when she flipped one of the switches and blasted the chimney with light, causing her mana to drop by a decent fraction of her total. 'I'm going to need more mana but it's a start and I can heal Amy if she gets into trouble.'

She grinned when she focused on her experience and a floating bar appeared for a couple of seconds before it vanished. 'At least I'm already halfway towards level three,' she mused as she ducked low to the roof to make sure people wouldn't be able to shoot her while her dragon finished looting the defeated dwarves. 'I should have asked how long they'd stay 'dead' for.'

Vicky smiled as her dragon flew up past the edge of the roof and landed next to her. "You're adorable."

The dragon bumped Vicky's hand with its head as if to say, you have a free hand, pet me.

Vicky lightly patted the dragon on the head then focused on her inventory and flipped the mental switch that sort of 'lit' up in her mind, bringing up a floating inventory page and a page for her dragon's loot. 'That makes it easy. Lots of copper, linen, wool and stone,' she mused as she looked over her loot, fairly sure they'd extorted or possibly traded for most of their supplies as she doubted they'd collected everything themselves in a couple of hours.

Vicky smirked when she saw a stack of cheap gems next to a rune etched copper sword with flames running over the blade's icon. 'Runed Sword of Flames, created by Blackstone. Three points of strength and stamina and it does a couple of points of fire damage when it hits something? It works until I find something better."

She frowned when she tried to drop it into her weapon slot and she got a message telling her that her class wasn't proficient with swords. "What do you mean Druid's can't use swords?"

"That's a load of crap," she grumbled as she looked through the collection of loot for a suitable weapon, ignoring the various swords until she found a solid looking iron club with glowing runes on it. "Nice." She dropped the club into her weapon slot and frowned when it told her she needed to find a weaponmaster to learn to use clubs efficiently. 'This is bullshit, what the hell can I use?"

She mentally pulled up her skill page. 'Crafting skills, magic skills, weapon skills." She tapped the weapons tab and looked at her current skills. 'Daggers and staves. Looks like I can pick up maces and fist weapons with the right trainers.' She closed the skill page then continued looking through her collection of loot, looking for a halfway decent staff or dagger that she could use until she sorted out her weapon skills.

0o0o0

Taylor pulled her attention away from the glowing books on the archmage's bookcase when her phone rang. She pulled her phone out of her inventory and hit the accept button after looking at the caller ID. "Hey."

"I heard your message and I saw the news report, how are you doing?" Danny asked, wanting to make sure his daughter was safe before he tried to figure out why his fifteen year old daughter was stuck in a porn simulation.

"Does fine mean okay or the other meaning?" Taylor asked as she returned to looting the glowing books. "I'm managing."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked, wishing he could fix things.

"Not really, I'm stuck in here for at least another week and you're stuck out there making sure the union doesn't collapse and Brockton Bay with it," Taylor replied.

"Taylor honey, I think you might have an overinflated sense of what I do," Danny warned her.

"You keep them working which means they're not causing problems or working for Uber and Leet," Taylor argued.

"We have enough idiots running around in costumes already," Danny complained.

"At least some of them are heroes, we could use more heroes or places to stick the idiots causing trouble. Speaking of idiots, how do you deal with a corrupt trade guild?" Taylor asked, curious if her father had any suggestions.

"That depends on what they're doing and what resources you have to deal with them," Danny replied after considering the question for a couple of seconds.

"They're trying to force everyone that has the Master Artisan perk to pay protection money or join their crafting guild by threatening people with violence if they don't comply," Taylor complained.

"What does the perk do and why do they care?" Danny asked.

"It basically lets you make better gear than anyone else for your two specialties which means your creations are valuable. The guild wants to corner the market which doesn't really make sense as you can't really stop people from using the auction house," Taylor explained as she finished looting the bookcase.

Danny sighed. "Let me guess, you have the perk?"

"Yeah, I grabbed tailoring, enchanting and archeology," Taylor replied as she walked over to the edge of the gap in the floor where she could see the large wolves and the rest of the group, a touch surprised that Amelia had gone with purple fur for one of the wolves.

"Why archeology?" Danny asked, picturing his daughter dressed like Indiana Jones wandering around an ancient temple. 'At least she sounds happy.'

"It's supposed to let me find ancient spells and strange magical items, stuff I couldn't normally get, I've mostly just been raiding abandoned libraries for interesting books," Taylor admitted.

"Annette would be proud," Danny assured his daughter, not sure what else to say.

"Thanks. What should I do about the guild?" Taylor asked, shifting the topic as she didn't know how long everything would take with the wolves.

"Is there any legal recourse for dealing with them?" Danny asked, figuring the answer would be no considering she was stuck in a game or at least a simulation of a game but figuring the question needed to be asked.

"I doubt it. The worst you could probably get them on is harassment or assault and you'd have to prove it. Even if you could link their usernames with their actual names and prove that they did something actionable, you'd still have to get them out of the game," Taylor complained.

"In other words, nothing that's going to help in the short term. Can you stop them from crafting?" Danny asked as he walked over to his desk and sat down in front of the computer.

"I doubt it." Taylor watched as the fur on the wolf Amelia was touching turned blue. "I'd have to stop them from getting to the auction house or hiring people to grab their supplies and I can't watch everyone. Even if I could, I'd still have to deal with the fact that the guards have a zero tolerance policy on player versus player combat in the cities which makes it harder."

"I don't suggest this in real life but can you bribe the guards?" Danny asked, not as unfamiliar with the concept of favors and 'gifts' as he'd like to be.

"No…" Taylor trailed off as she remembered one of the guild blurbs on the character creation page talking about making enough money to buy out the government infrastructure. "On second thought, I might be able to buy the barracks which might let me alter the rules. If I can change it so my guild doesn't have to worry about the guards, it would be a lot easier to deal with the Trade Guild and the wandering idiots."

Danny took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'm not sure if I should be proud that my little girl is thinking up creative solutions to her problems or worried that she's looking at becoming a warlord."

"Either works," Taylor replied with amusement, glad that she had the start of an idea on how to deal with the idiots. "Do you have any other ideas for dealing with them?"

"Can you move objects in the simulation?" Danny asked thoughtfully as he put his glasses back on and read the captions of the news story.

"Most of them, why?" Taylor asked, wondering what her father was thinking.

"Because wedging doors shut and or moving wagons in front of them is an effective way to ruin someone's day," Danny pointed out as he ran a search for the game's wiki, trying to get some idea of what his daughter was dealing with.

"They'd just teleport," Taylor complained.

"How often can they use their teleport?" Danny asked as he clicked on the link the search engine tossed up.

"Mages have a couple of options but the hearthstones that anyone can pick up can only be used once an hour," Taylor explained.

"It's probably still worth paying people to harass them, especially in the early stages when you're trying to keep them from getting started." Danny frowned as he looked at the complicated website. 'So much for it being like D&D or Capes,' he mused as he selected the class page, figuring that was a decent place to start.

"Fucking hell!" Sophia blurted when she checked the blue wolf and realized that it was immune to shadow magic. "It actually worked."

[Smug!] Shaper said, rather happy with her host now that she wasn't being a stick in the mud.

"Thanks. I need to finish some stuff in the dungeon and concentrate on getting back to base safely, can I call you back in twenty to thirty minutes?" Taylor asked, hoping he wouldn't be upset.

Danny's mind flashed back to the idiot that had been talking on a cellphone that had hit Annette. "Sure, just a quick question first, which class did you grab?"

"Eldritch hunter, it's basically a mix of arcane and frost magic from the mage class with the beastmaster talent tree from hunters," Taylor explained.

"Thanks, I'm trying to read up on the classes. Stay safe," Danny ordered, not sure what else to say or how to fix things.

"As safe as I can," Taylor replied then ended the call, figuring they could talk about things once she got back to her mansion. 'That could have gone worse.' She stuck her phone in her inventory then blinked down to Fenrus' room next to Amy. "Any luck?"

"Probably," Amy admitted as she worked on giving the purple wolf shadow immunity. "I'm going to have to run a bunch of tests before I feel confident giving the group shadow immunity without screwing something up but making the wolves immune to shadow damage is a good start."

Sophia laughed. "I'm going to enjoy ripping the necromancers apart in Stratholme."

"Hell yeah," Alec agreed, remembering the various times they'd killed his character playing the beta version of the game.

"History?" Chevalier asked with a touch of amusement.

"Yeah, they like swarming people with undead minions," Alec complained.

Void opened his mouth to say something about how you just needed to be careful with the pulls then shut it when he realized it didn't matter, they'd probably just have Noelle run through everything or they'd be immune to shadow magic which would make the place a joke.

Noelle grinned. "I feel like I should argue on behalf of my fellow necromancers but most of them are insane."

"It's probably all of the death magic they're using," Missy joked as she walked back in the room from outside. "I have the maze set up."

"Probably." Noelle glanced between Sophia and Taylor then looked at the wolves. "Do you want to go first or should I?"

Sophia glanced at Skitter. "I'll do it, I can phase if something goes wrong and you might cause the rest of the wolves to flip out."

Taylor's second head grinned at Stalker. "Works for me, I'll toss a renew and a shield up just in case."

[Good idea] Admin agreed as she headed towards the door.

"Cool," Sophia replied as she followed Admin with a spring in her steps and something that might actually count as a smile on her lips if you were being generous.

'She's a lot happier here than she was in the bay,' Missy mused as she followed the other two girls, wondering why Sophia was acting odd and how long it would last because she was almost pleasant.

"Let's go," Noelle told one of the blue wolves then followed Missy and Sophia out of the room with the blue wolf following her, leaving Amy to finish working on the purple wolf.

"This should be interesting," Alec said as he headed outside to watch the show.

"Yep," Aisha agreed as everyone other than Amy and the npcs followed them to watch the show.

Taylor watched as Missy tossed a large chunk of mutton into the quartyard. "That's it?"

"Fetch!" Missy ordered, pointing at the chunk of meat.

"Go for it," Noelle suggested when the wolf looked at her, causing the wolf to jump down to the courtyard and run over to the large chunk of meat.

Missy closed the gap in her maze. "You're up."

Taylor's second head quickly tossed a renew spell on Sophia as the other girl phased and jumped down to the courtyard then followed it with a shield. "Shield's up."

Taylor wasn't sure what she'd been expecting but watching the wolf claw at the air and prowl around for the twenty seconds it took Stalker to tame the giant wolf felt a bit anticlimactic. On the other hand, it seemed a lot safer than doing it the 'normal' way. "Nice."

"Are you done?" Missy asked, wanting to make sure before she dropped the barrier.

"Yeah, we're good," Sophia replied as she pulled a large chunk of deer meat out of her inventory to feed her hungry pet before it decided to leave as had happened to her once or twice in the game.

Missy opened part of the maze so Sophia's wolf could get out. "That should do it."

Sophia tossed the chunk of deer meat to her wolf. "Food."

"Any ideas on how we're supposed to get the worgen back since summoning doesn't work?" Chevalier asked.

Missy shook her head. "Not really, it's one thing in a game when you can just run there or ride a horse but we're talking hundreds or thousands of miles, even with space warping, that's going to take a while."

"Can we stuff the copy of the archmage in our inventory?" Taylor asked thoughtfully.

"It's worth a try." Noelle turned to look at Admin. "Can you summon me? I want to see if the archmage comes with me if I'm carrying him."

Admin gave Noelle a thumbs up then used her summoning ritual, causing a portal to open in front of her. [Focus on using the portal.]

Taylor raised her hands and focused on the portal, causing a stream of energy to jump to the portal.

Noelle raised her hands and focused on the portal for a couple of seconds before a popup appeared in front of her asking if she wanted to accept the summons. "I'll be right back." She dashed back into the tower and picked up her copy of the archmage.

"What are you doing?" the Arugal clone asked in annoyance as he was tossed over Noelle's shoulder.

"Testing something," Noelle replied then accepted the summon, causing the copy of Arugal to drop to the floor when she reappeared on the walkway. "So much for doing things the easy way."

"That should do it, let's go," Amy told the wolves then headed for the door after pulling a chunk of mutton out of her inventory, causing the wolves to happily follow her.

"That's unfortunate, we'll probably need a portal," Noelle complained.

[We could duplicate the teleportation symbiotes], Twisted Clone suggested.

[I'd rather not give a bunch of possibly insane monsters the ability to teleport around the world, someone would kill them and take the symbiotes], Admin argued.

[We'd get more data], Twisted Clone pointed out.

[No, we'd just have to fix the mess], Admin replied, not interested in causing Taylor trouble.

[Messes generate data], Twisted Clone argued.

[No, if you cause problems they will be less likely to look for monsters to combine or copy, thus screwing up my data collection], Shaper cut in. [My host is finally with the mad science program, do not screw this up.]

[Fine], Twisted Clone admitted, willing to admit that Shaper might have a point.

Missy shook her head. "Yeah, I don't think I can twist space enough to make getting back to Stormwind or Duskwood easy or reasonable."

"That just means we'll have to set up in Pyrewood Village or Fenris Keep until Amelia can finish running tests," Void suggested as Amy walked out of the tower with both wolves and their worgen following her.

Amy frowned as she thought about the village filled with people cursed to turn into worgen during the night. "I wouldn't mind visiting the village during the day but it's getting close to dark and I don't want to have to kill everyone in the village when they turn into monsters."

"They'd respawn," Sophia pointed out.

"Let me rephrase that, I doubt the loot is worth enough to bother considering we could just run the dungeon again," Amy replied, not really wanting the memories of killing civilians even if they were just npcs in a simulation considering how real everything looked and felt. "Besides, if I'm clearing anything, it's going to be Fenris Keep, it should have a decent line of sight on the murlocs."

"Aren't they the fish people?" Taylor asked, remembering the time Greg had bitched about them when she couldn't avoid him.

"They're annoying, they're also low level," Void complained.

"Which is basically perfect for the rest of the group," Amy pointed out. "If Warp twists space, the rest of the group should be able to shoot them and level up enough that we can run them through a dungeon."

Noelle nodded. "In that case, let's tame the wolves then I'll go back in and copy some more worgen to act as guards and foot soldiers."

"Can you pull up the wiki page on your phone?" Void asked Taylor, a touch surprised that they hadn't found anything particularly interesting off the mobs despite the fact that they had a boost to their loot drop rate.

"Sure," Taylor replied as she pulled out her phone, opened a webpage and hit the bookmark for the warcraft wiki as the actual game's wiki wasn't all that great. "What did you need to look at?"

"I'm curious on the drop rate for the random blues that should drop off the trash mobs, I didn't run it all that much because the horde liked ganking anyone that showed up," Void complained.

"We'll probably have to run it more than once," Noelle said as she jumped down to the courtyard and led the untamed blue wolf into the maze.

Missy closed the break in the maze after Noelle stepped out of the area. "You're good to go."

"Thanks," Noelle replied as she started taming her wolf, causing it to freak out and try to get through the warped space to eat her.

Taylor grinned when she pulled up the dungeon information and saw the first entry of the list of monsters. "We're going to have to go back in or at least send Noelle in to grab the Shadowfang Whitecap, it's immune to cold."

"I knew I was forgetting something," Sophia muttered.

"You should run a search for elemental resistant mobs," Aisha suggested, almost wishing that she'd grabbed the hunter class if they were going to hand out awesome pets.

Void held his hand out. "I'll check."

"Go for it, I need to grab my pet." Taylor handed Void her phone then pulled a piece of meat out of her inventory and showed the wolf then quickly tossed it into the courtyard, causing the wolf to jump down to the courtyard.

"I'll see what I can figure out after I check the stuff that can drop," Void assured her as he checked the possible drops for the dungeon.

Noelle grinned as she fed her new wolf a couple legs of mutton to make it happy or at least less angry with her then headed for the massive metal grate that separated the courtyard and the dungeon entrance. "Work on taming your wolf, I'm going to see if I can rip the grate apart for material."

"It's worth a shot," Chevalier piped up, knowing the group needed the resources and he wasn't in a hurry to get to the meeting with Director Piggot.

Taylor waited until Noelle's wolf followed her then tossed a leg of meat into the middle of the cage of twisted space, causing the purple wolf to dash over and snatch it up in a single bite. She did her best to ignore the sounds of breaking bone and the mental images of the wolf ripping her apart if it managed to break out of Warp's cage. "Ready?"

Missy closed the cage. "You're good."

Taylor focused on the purple wolf and cast her beast taming spell, causing the wolf to go berserk and start howling and clawing at the twisted space in a frantic attempt to reach her as she used her magic to claim the wolf. It felt like the longest twenty seconds in her life, mostly because the wolf went berserk and started biting at everything until her spell ended and it flopped to the ground exhausted, angry and hungry. She promptly tossed another chunk of meat to the wolf, knowing it would help increase her new pet's loyalty. "Thanks, I don't think I would have enjoyed letting it chew on me for twenty seconds."

"No shit," Sophia agreed as she reached up and scratched her wolf between its ears.

"No worries, it's easier than trying to heal you through the damage." Missy dropped the cage then headed for the exit, glad that everything had worked out.