16 – Bonds of Blood

It was pleasantly easy to communicate with my new bound rat.

He couldn’t understand my words, of course. Still, the bond allowed easy transfer of concepts and meanings.

That went both ways as well. Just as the rat didn’t speak a human language, I didn’t speak rat.

An interesting fact I quickly figured out was the nature of control afforded to me by the bond.

Unlike what I’d somewhat feared and felt guilty about, forming a blood bond didn’t simply mind control the recipient. I could, with mental effort, impress my will as commands across the link. This was a contest of wills though, not a unilateral decision on my part. Obviously I would win in such a contest versus a chicken or rat, but humans were a different beast.

Following this revelation was the obvious question – why did the rat stop struggling against my grip after the bond formed? If I didn’t suddenly gain a firm control over its mind, wouldn’t it retain its fear towards the big, scary human– err, vampire?

The answer to that was rather simple. The bond wasn’t entirely one-directional. I already knew I could actively send thoughts and commands over, but there was also a passive component.

So far it appeared to make the other aware of my presence. It brought us closer together, in a way. I was no longer a stranger, but instead a familiar being. Like a friend or perhaps even family member.

To the rat, it basically let it know it wasn’t necessary to be as wary of me. Rats could be tamed. I knew that people kept rats or mice as pets on Earth. One of the major factors there was regular peaceful, positive interactions. And food helps too, I smiled to myself.

By forming the blood bond, I basically got to skip a large part of that acclimation phase. I instead went straight to being ‘safe’ to be around. That, combined with the abundant food I’d provided, made us best friends.

I didn’t know whether or not the bond transmitted my emotions the other way, as I received theirs. Unfortunately, even with the connection to aid, our communication was still limited.

After a longer ‘conversation’ with my bonded rat, I thought it was time to test some ideas and questions I had. Non-destructive ones, if at all possible. Even over just the course of half an hour, I’d grown attached to the little fur-ball. He was quite goofy and playful.

The first test was rather simple – could a bonded creature send over sensory input through the bond?

It took a while to properly convey what I wanted. Basically, I was asking to see what the rat did. That concept by itself wasn’t too hard to grasp. Unfortunately, my buddy didn’t have a good idea of what the bond was, nor how it worked.

So far in our communications, I’d been both sending my own meanings as well as actively reading his. This deeper access could also be contested by the bond partner, though the rat didn’t do it purposefully after a few accidental false starts right in the beginning.

Nearly an hour later, I finally received input I hadn’t manually retrieved myself. It was only a single blip of focused effort, but it made me glad nonetheless. I praised my partner profusely, scratching all his favorite spots. In response I got another intentionally transmitted burst of emotion, happiness this time.

Before getting the rat to try sending his senses, I figured it was probably a good idea to try it myself as well. It was tricky, but in the end not that different from any other thought. There was just a mentality shift required.

I knew I’d succeeded when my rat friend suddenly jumped up from my lap and looked around in confusion. The mental impression I got roughly translated to ‘Where did the other rat come from?’

Chuckling, I scratched the top of his head, making him notice the way my hand moving lined up between my vision and his feeling of touch. The confusion ramped up for a moment before being replaced by realization.

The sight I was sending was still unfamiliar though. Several parts weren’t possible to properly understand for my little buddy’s brain. Though I didn’t understand why until a few minutes later, when he finally figured out how to replicate my feat.

What I received was, to say it mildly, not great. I should’ve expected that, to an extent. It was, after all, still nearly pitch-black out here. A few clouds had cleared away, so some more stars were visible. Still no twin moons though.

That the rat could see at all was pretty impressive, really. Unfortunately, its night vision paled in comparison to mine. Not surprising, since I had what I assumed was magic on my side.

Still, the blurry, black-and-white image was a little disappointing. Not to mention disorienting, with its different field of vision due to where the rat’s eyes were placed in its head compared to mine.

Even when we sneaked back towards the manor and I had him watch the patrolling guards, it still wasn’t good.

For one, the blurriness was apparently not tied to low-light environments. It was like a human that desperately needed glasses. Secondly, the colors were all wrong. Faded, for one. Additionally, the grass was brown instead of green. That explained a lot of the issues he had parsing my vision.

Apparently rats – or at least this particular rat – were colorblind.

For now, I would consider my test a success. It might not be the greatest asset for rats, but if – when – I got a human with a blood bond, their vision would be very useful. Not to say that being able to share rat vision was useless, far from it.

Unlike humans, a rat was a lot smaller. Most humans couldn’t hide out in a crack between the floorboards, or inside a wall, or up in the rafters. No humans I knew of, to be more precise. There might be magic out there to shrink or turn amorphous of whatever, but no one I knew could do anything of the sort.

Even subpar vision, placed in a strategically useful spot, was better than none.

After our success sharing vision, the other senses were far easier to figure out.

I quickly learned that rats had both excellent hearing and smell. Especially smell was represented far stronger than I was used to from being a human. If it wasn’t for my recent experience with boosted senses of my own, I would’ve been quite overwhelmed.

The sense of touch however… it didn’t translate well at all. I wondered if it was because of the species barrier, but anything either of us sent in that regard was intensely disorienting.

Something to put aside and test again with a bonded human.

Next, we confirmed the bond’s communication had a rather short range. I was already mostly aware of this due to the chicken. The man hadn’t had a single thing going on, whether I was close to him or not.

For now, I’d estimate the range for full connection to be only around ten meters, give or take. I wondered whether that would increase over time, or when I resumed my body strengthening, or if there was some sort of way to improve the bond.

Beyond that range, anything sent quickly faded in strength for each little bit of added distance. At around eleven meters it was barely detectable that any attempt at communication had happened at all.

Even further beyond that, all that was left was a vague sense of direction between us. So far, we hadn’t found a maximum range on that. Another thing to test out at a later time.

Waiting out the time between patrols to avoid detection, I returned to my room with my new friend. As I turned around to close the window behind me, I cast a look up at the starlit sky. It was breathtaking, hundreds, maybe thousands of stars spread across the black canvas of night.

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My eye caught on a conspicuous, round patch of darkness. It appeared Umbra was in the sky. After a quick nod towards the god-named moon, just to be safe, I closed and curtained my window.

Even the rat’s vision wasn’t able to penetrate the absolute darkness that fell over the room. Reluctantly, I turned the magical lamp to the absolute lowest level it would allow. This was actually dim enough it didn’t hurt my eyes to stare at. Neither would it allow a human to do much more than not run into very obvious furniture though.

Sitting down on my bed, the rat jumped up into my lap again. He really found it comfortable. It seemed to make him feel safe to be so close to me. Like being snuggled into a den with his kin, according to his thoughts. The scritches that usually followed were also a big plus.

My plan was to move onto potentially more dangerous tests now.

To my little friend’s credit, he agreed to help even after I clearly translated the risk.

For now, a repeat of that ‘influence’ thing from earlier.

Locking eyes to beady eyes with the rat, it took less than a second for my influence to settle. That was… significantly faster than before. It also felt, for lack of a better descriptor, deeper.

After turning my gaze away, it also held for a moment before breaking.