Then again, since when was the emaciated Vilkas soft and warm? The poor wolf would better be described as bony, at best. So, was it even Vilkas that she was leaning against then?
It was this thought, more than anything, that brought Arianna to full wakefulness. After all, there should be no other animals for her to take a nap on besides her wolf companion. Varnas was obviously not the cause, not only because he was a raven and therefore not covered in fur, but also because she was fairly certain that the last thing the grumpy bird would be doing was allowing Arianna to have a restful sleep atop him.
Opening her eyes to the relative darkness of the now familiar cave, Arianna sat up like a bolt. This caused her pillow to roll over and stare at her with deep, concerned blue eyes. Arianna gawked at the wolf. Even in this dark she could see him clear as day, almost as if he were emitting his own light. On top of that, she knew—almost as if it were an instinct—that this was, indeed, Vilkas.
Though, this wolf looked nothing like the grey and mangy being she had grown to care for. He now appeared to be much larger and definitely much healthier. No longer was he skin and bones covered in a thin and patchy layer of greying fur. As a matter of fact, he wasn't even the same color anymore. Once grey fur was now an iridescent white, and once milky yellow eyes now gazed at her in a color that reminded her of summer skies.
"How..." She breathed weakly, so very confused.
As she watched, the wolf's tail wagged slightly, and he slowly rolled so that he was now seated next to her. Arianna noted that his paws seemed massive now, and his pearly white fangs too. Where he had looked like a beaten-down stray, he now looked like a noble winter wolf! How was this possible?
"Vilkas?" She asked, just to be sure. She didn't even bother to ponder why the names she had, literally, just given her animal companions seemed to roll off her tongue so easily, as if she had been calling them by those names all along.
Vilkas made a small 'woofing' noise and leaned forward, setting his soft forehead to hers.
An irritated caw, accompanied by equally aggressive beak clacks, reminded Arianna that Varnas was here as well. Turning away from the miraculously changed Vilkas, Arianna saw that the wolf had not been the only one to have gone through some kind of transformation. Varnas, too, seemed to have been granted a new lease on life somehow.
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The raven was also much larger, getting to about two and a half feet in height. She admitted to herself that she wasn't really sure how big ravens were supposed to be, but this seemed excessive. And, just like with Vilkas, Varnas also seemed to have regained his vigor. No longer could she see patches of skin beneath oily feathers. He was now as sleek and black as a raven should be. Arianna also noted that there appeared to be a sort of reddish shine to the ravens' usually black eyes as well.
He seemed a little too large for his favorite perch any longer; that was for certain.
"What happened to you both?" Arianna asked, obviously not expecting an answer from either. True to form, the raven simply twitched his head to the side in typical bird-like fashion.
Varnas snapped his beak at the wolf, ignoring the confused woman between them.
Vilkas couldn't really make a rebuttal to that. In all honesty, even though she had bound he and Varnas to herself and clearly now harbored the mana reminiscent of a god... she was nowhere near the level of one. A god was just that—godly. They had the power to accomplish great and wild things beyond the imaginings of others. As it was, Arianna could still be taken out by a falling stone from atop their hillock.
"Are you fighting?" Arianna butted in. Her face was a blank as always, though her eyes seemed to reflect suspicion. She clearly could not hear them, but judging from the sounds that were audible to her and their body language, she felt very much like they were arguing about something.
The wolf and raven averted their gazes, both from each other as well as away from her, pretty well confirming that that had been exactly what they had been doing.
Still, how had they changed? And why? Was it the fog, or just the way their bodies normally worked? Maybe they looked haggard most of the time, but after the fog rolls in, they then become healthy again. All ideas sounded more ridiculous as they came to her.
Deciding that there was just no way that she was going to get any answers to her questions, she put them out of her mind for the time being. Given all her other problems and questions she already had to deal with, the changes to her odd friends didn't seem all that pressing an issue.
Rather, Arianna decided that furthering her and her friends' survival was what was most important. She had no idea why the wolf and raven stayed within this swamp—especially given how intelligent they obviously were—where there was no food, barely any drinkable water, and nasty fog that liked to roll in that was so bad that they had to hide from it. This was not a place conducive to survival as far as she could see.
Whether her animal friends liked it or not, she decided that it was time to see if there was a way out of this swamp.