Scott has just finished up a day at school and is looking for a quiet afternoon on the rez.
Quil is trying to argue with Embry about some dumb show they're watching, and he just listens, trying not to laugh.
He sips his soda.
Scott has a brief sense of vertigo, enough to drop his soda, then everything spins and blurs and keeps spinning and spinning...
...he finds himself on a forest floor a couple of feet away from his spilled soda can. The trees are ridiculously tall and definitely not any species he can recognize.
The buildings are really colorful, and of an architectural style that Scott will find unfamiliar.
This is a small village of some sort, not a single car in sight, but plenty of horse-drawn carriages. And the horses are large, some are at least ten feet tall. People are going about their day in colorful clothing, that Scott also doesn't recognize, most don't give Scott a second glance, but at least one looks at him with vague recognition and smiles politely.
The boy stares at him with a look that would've been take seriously if it wasn't coming from someone that was still losing baby teeth. "But you found Elsewhere!"
The man inquires the boy what is going on and they talk.
"He says he will take you to Asheville because you just found Eslewhere and they know English."
They hop on the man's carriage. There is a brief discussion between man and boy that is apparently about the merits of the boy being allowed to come or not. The boy loses.
The carriage runs along a wide and long road,the buildings get scarcer, but no completely absent. The man doesn't speak a word.
They cross over a bridge made of pretty white stone, it doesn't go over a river, but a chasm so deep that Scott won't be able to see the bottom. There are a couple of signs one says "Welcome to Asheville" while the other is not even written in a recognizable alphabet. The buildings and fashion styles are much easier to recognize, looking downright American.
It doesn't take long until they stop on a building with a sign that says "Ashenville City Hall" the building is rather small for a City Hall, but the rest of the town isn't that big too. The man asks Scott to get inside where they find a older lady. "Did you just vanished from where you came from and found yourself in Elsewhere?"
"It happens some-" The lady says before being interrupted by the man, "Excuse me," she and the man talk, and she pays for the fare. The man departs without even a goodbye.
"Sorry. Anyway, Elsewhere is a world that sometimes catches people from other worlds. It's possible to get you back where you're from, but it might take a while. We no longer have a gate conveniently nearby and we haven't updated the protocol to send people to other places. But we can house and feed you while that is sorted. Also, you're a sorcerer and that is why you found Elsewhere, this means more lifeforce and easier time doing magic, you might even have a power or two. Depending on your natural talents it might be possible for you to arrange better expedience on returning home by doing magical favors or you might even get a sorcerer to pick you as apprenticeship."
"Well, you are covered because that is the protocol for sorcerers that find Elsewhere. But we had to relocate the entire village recently and many lost their houses, so we're better prepared."
She makes the call. "The sorceress herself is out of town, but one of her apprentices will come by soon."
And then she takes Scott's general information, full name, birth, nationality (he is lucky he landed anywhere near an english speaker), education level and other things. She also asks if he prefers to be housed in a small but private unit or if they should go straight to find a family that will have him. She explains the system for meal tickets and how to acquire donated clothes, necessities and so on. It's so efficient that it is hard to believe it is any sort of government.
"This entirely fair," the lady says agreeably. and after taking the rest of his data she instructs for him to wait in the front hall for a man wearing a purple belt with a golden star.
It doesn't take too long until a tall, blond young man walks in wearing the relevant belt. He spots Scott and double takes. "Hi?"
He is squinting at Scott so hard that he forgets to answer that for moment.
"Oh, okay. Yeah, if you found Elsewhere it means sorcery, the dimension attracts them. And 'house' might be a bit too generous, shoebox-sized apartment would be more accurate."
Pause.
"Okay, do you happen to be my cousin's long lost twin, because you two are identical to the point I'm suspecting sorcery."
"Sure... I really want to introduce you to Henry, but we can do that after the shoebox."
They find the lady and Gabe reports to her. She gives Scott a key and directions to the housing complex. Gabe is happy to take Scott there.
"So, I don't supposed you would know if you were switched at birth, would you?"
"In retrospect I didn't know why I had any expectations. Okay, I will get you at least a pair of shorts..." Gabe runs down the hallway and knocks on the door.
Apparently he knows someone that lives here and is willing to lend shorts to Scott. And if the alleged werewolf is willing, Gabe will conduct him through the streets to a lighthouse-like building. Scott might notice that there is no signs of large bodies of water nearby, also the sky is cloudy and is hard to tell where the sun is.
"We can help you go back, yes. The werewolf business can't be true, you must be a sorcerer that changes shapes, which explains the similarity."
He leads them to a room filled with diagrams, crystals and magical looking apparatus, the chandelier above is lit with a dozen crystals the size of a tennis ball. Henry starts collecting various objects.
"Mhmm." Henry replies absently, both because it is impossible and not worthy consideration and because he is busy collecting items for magic.
Good thing Scott is already shirtless. Henry will need to paint a couple of symbols on his chest and on his back, as part of whatever he is doing.
He waves a crystal over Scott while murmuring something to himself.
He starts frowning as this progresses.
"It can take a week just for the portal itself, but I'm not sure if that is for a portal that will take you anywhere in your world or a portal targeted to somewhere convenient. And there is the issue of finding someone that is authorized to make the portal. If we're lucky your world isn't all that newly connected and there is already a portal there and then is just a matter of a trip, but I haven't heard of a second Earth."
"It's pretty stable and safe to live in, atmosphere, light and gravity are all handled by the place's magic. The ravines that actually go all the way are artificially made because of the Dead City, which is... a magical effect that infects the surrounding area through the ground and creates stone buildings. The place is dangerous because it stops healing and proper lifeforce recovery."
"Me, Gabe and our great-aunt Annabeth, albeit she found it decades before we are born and neither of us got here at same time. Gabe found Elsewhere before I did, and when I found it days later I spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking it was an hallucination."
"Not sure there are any particular set of skills in need or which ones do you have. I suppose there are some odd jobs to do in town and some menial stuff worth doing here. I kinda of hesitating ask to leech lifeforce from you because it sounds kinda of ominous, but that is an option if you regeneration was as good as it looked like. I could also pay you to analyze how your... werewolfiness works."
"Of course," The Asheville's center is this park called "spring's square" and the streets radiate from it. This the town's club, there are a few bars around, but they are the kind of place you hang out to talk to the regulars while drinking and snacking. That building over there is the town's library/bookstore/music store/cinema. Down this street is the bathhouse, which retains that function but nowadays is mostly used as a pool, ice cream place and ice-skating rink (they've magic to keep the pools hot or cold as needed). This, this and this other street are full of assorted business, that building over there being the bank and that clock-tower over there is also the mail office and place where they make all announcements, Gabe points out the nice restaurants when they come up. There are indeed several arcades games scattered about town inside all sort of business, some even look new, but the places with public phones all have lines and Scott has yet to catch the sight of a TV screen. Is there anywhere Scott want to go? Gabe is willing to give him a treat. Maybe ice cream?
"See those cracks in the street and how it goes up through that wall and then the building behind it? The town originally was somewhere else, but they floated it piece by piece and then resettled here. I can probably tell you how they did it step by step because Henry was obsessed about it when he heard the story. The poor guy has trouble just believing things sometimes."
"Sure, be a nerdy type like Henry. Maybe you're long lost inter-dimensional twins."
Gabe directs Scott to the library, which is relatively modern looking. The collection is eclectic with books that look made in different centuries standing next to each other in the shelves. There are quite few people, mostly kids or people in the line to use the phones.
There is a couple of young teens that are whispering at each other giggling, a old man that is looking at a pocket watch like he required it as much as breathing, a absurdly nondescript man whose traits fade from his memories as soon as he looks at the next person, a young woman with absurdly long hair that looks like a hippy, and a very tall girl with long sleek black hair, she briefly looks up from her book and looks him in the eyes before getting back to her reading.
She is the most important person in the world now he lives to protect her and fulfill her every desire.
"Okay, I'm going to charitable assume this is a side effect of the love. Because I offered an option that I wouldn't impose on you. Would you mind changing back so we can deal with this situation that won't end with your beloved thinking she should get into protective custody until someone magically deals with you?"
"Okay, okay." Henry tries to say soothingly "I will talk to her then." he does not mention that she could simply run away and that says a lot about what she thinks about the subject... and her staying might not be better. "Is there anything we can do to help while we wait for he come by?"
He briefly glances down. "Besides the clothes."
"Don't talk about it like it's a bad thing. I know she might not want to talk to me, even, but don't say that, either, it doesn't help to hear it. If she says that to my face, I don't think it'll hurt as much, because I can't imagine her hurting me. Don't talk about getting rid of it."
Gabe comes back and hands Scott a towel.
"Most of the time you will have to just sit there. I don't think anything dangerous will happen, but basic magic safety measure is obey the sorcerer's commands, stay still if I say so, bolt if I say so. Some of the texts require doing stuff like mentally sending you a message, reaing your emotional state and pushing your emotions a bit to see how your mind reacts to being poked in different ways. I'll explain what is going on, except for a couple of tests that depend on the target being ignorant, but I can explain what happened after the fact. Is this okay?"
They go through the process and most of the time all Scott has to do is sit in a circle of various objects like candles, herbs and crystals while Henry squints at him.
How strong is this love at first sight thing? How strong is the packlessness? How do they interact? How do the love picks a target? How jealous Scott is? Could he deal with his beloved loving another? Could he fall in love with another person? By the time Henry goes through the spells that answer all this questions it should be time for the twins to arrive.
The love is indelible. The target can be any subset of women that aren't sterile; though he clearly has a 'type' of girl he could have imprinted on, this doesn't have much to do with personal compatibility.
Scott's love is dependent on what Fernanda wants. If she wants him to be her boyfriend, he will. If she doesn't, he won't.
The packlessness is painfully lonely, and the imprint doesn't solve it, but it helps.
"I think if you want me to not be sad, but you don't want me to put any pressure on you, you probably can't ask me what I want, because what I want is for you to be happy and near me. If you want to find out if you like me, or want me to be happy, or want to be near me, I don't know how to tell you. Around you, I don't think I can really...say no to things, or do things I think you won't like."
"Okay. Wolves like us have pack telepathy, and when I shift and I can't sense anyone else there, it hurts. The loneliest I've ever felt- and it makes me want to- it makes me want to go home. But now that I met you, I just think of you, and it's not so bad. I think if I stay here too long, it'll still be too much. I feel like I'm empty, like I'm full of holes. But you help. And the way you help is that it just seems obvious helping you be happy is the most important thing in the world, and everything I can do to make you happy makes me happy. I think you could lock me in a cage and torture me and I'd be okay, as long as you were doing it."
Fernanda makes herself even more neutral. "Okay, I'm not into torture and I don't want you feeling alone and miserable. How much helping are we talking about? Do you need to do my very whim every hour of everyday or helping me with research for an hour per day is enough? Should I call Felicia's boyfriend and talk over the possibility of accepting you as a roommate or what?"
"I don't want to be-penciled in. Is there anything you can use super-human strength for? I know first aid, maybe there's some use for that? I guess you have sorcery. I just want to help. Roommate sounds fine. And I'll be around you as much as you want me, as much as you let me."
"Well, what are the options here? Henry was sure that you would always love me, but less sure if you could fall in non-magical love with other people. How would I react if I wanted to me picking someone else or have multiple partners? For that matter what was your sexuality before the magical love?"
"You're completely new magic so it might be infinite. What we would be dealing with is a component of lifeforce known as Youth, which it isn't quite about being young - more about the organism being stable. Trees have Youth too, but it doesn't erode like Youth in humans. Maybe yours is like that and since you're very close to human we might figure out a way to transfer the trait to humans, or make people into werewolves or..." Fernanda shakes her head but then smiles, "I'm getting ahead of myself."
"I will do my best not give your mom reason to worry about me. There is likely a magical solution to the pack problem and if there isn't... How amenable would your pack be to me moving in? Plus or minus Felicia, Katur and a magic teacher? Someone is going to be interested in werewolves well enough that they will want me for an aprentice just on the grounds of being attached to you."
"Fernanda is the best person I know. I doubt there is a single human being in all known multiverse that is so invested in improving the entire thing. She can come off as cold to people that don't know her well, but the truth is that she is very strong-willed, determined, compassionate, logical and brilliant. She will do her best to improve the quality of life in your tribe and like succeed at it."
Third option: Fernanda returns and wants to talk with Scott alone again, assuming that he agrees (and this is a very reasonable assumption given imprinting). She gets them alone and says. "Okay, I didn't mention this sooner because it is as much as Katur's secret as ours. Please, don't make negative assumptions and don't be mad on my behalf, but Katur is also my boyfriend as well as Felicia's."
"I am, we all are. But it is the kind of thing that we can't be public about and Felicia is more PDA prone than I am so we just pretend that Katur is only dating her. Anyway, as long you don't have a problem with that it should be fine for you to move in once I magically test the love thing."
"Being even half as trustworthy than Felicia is- I'm failing to come up with a word that properly expresses the impossibility. But despite the unusual set up I don't date anyone, Katur is literally my second relationship and there is even more limited pool of people that deserve Felicia, and I think Katur deserves Felicia."
"Well, the plan is take you in and evaluate you mentally - see how we can attenuate the packless problem while we are at that - and biologically. Anything further is dependent on what we find out and outside factors, but I think you can at least stay with me and be lifeforce source and be useful and happy like that, at minimum."
"We were checking with our grandparents miscellaneous news and were planning to spend the night doing quiet reading. Felicia and I have been basically living off Katur's goodwill until we could find someone to apprenticeship under. If it makes you feel better, you're interesting enough that our chances improved with you around. We're considering Henry's and Gabe's Great-Grandaunt," She points to the door to the room where the two are, "as a last resort but the woman is - quite frankly - nuts."
Some more sorcery happens, Fernanda draws runes all over Scott's chest and forehead with a pleasantly scented oil and then she taps his forehead gently.
She blinks and asks confirmation from Henry that feeling this strong of an emotion isn't slowly killing Scott's brain, Henry didn't notice any such damage.
"Well, with that out of the way. Do you want to come to our place, Scott?"
"I'm glad you had her. Our parents live on Earth - not the one you're from, of course - but they were born in Elan - that is one of the other attached worlds. We also have a little sister that is back on our Earth with our parents. We also have a few uncles and aunts, but are really only in speaking terms with my mother side of the family."
Fernanda regards him for a moment. "Don't panic. I'm not sure what they will think of you, but you shouldn't be concerned they would influence me negatively towards you. They actually don't approve of us learning magic, but here we are anyway." She shrugs. "I mean it is possible they will think the situation is great because it is a positive for me."
Is he distressed? Fernanda always feels hollow when she tries to calm down distressed people.
"Don't worry. There are some pretty powerful sorcery out there, neutralizing vampires threat should be straightforward. I'm just concerned that no one is going to even consider that vampires could be rehabilitated."
"Mostly keep calm and get a long nicely with me, Felicia and Katur. Portals are too advanced for us to do so we'll have to wait for that, or I could see if my grandparents could pull some favors, which would upset my parents but not really inconvenience me that much. We can sort out other things to do later."
Pause.
"When I land would you mind carrying me inside? I will be tired by then."
Good, at least the protectiveness isn't that strong.
"We're getting close. It is that yellow-purple building over there."
They're approaching a few buildings standing on a grassy clearing, there is indeed a building that is mostly yellow-purple and extremely tacky. It is look like half-dozen architectural styles had a child with multiple personality disorder. Felicia is a bit ahead of them on the ground.
Fernanda lands on the edge of the clearing and manages the land such that Scott can easily hold her.
"Magical steroids?" Says a tall man walking into the room from a side door.
He is eight feet tall and dressed in clothes that look reminiscent of the first people Scott saw in Elsewhere. Because of a column he only notices Scott after taking a couple more steps. His head turns to Scott and he looks suddenly self-conscious.
"Oh. You must be Scott," He offers a hand, "I'm Katur."
"Fair, I only know you're a werewolf that falls in love at first sight. And from another Earth. Which I'm pretty sure makes you at least ten times more interesting than I'm."
Katur goes around Scott and behind the couch, putting a hand on Fernanda's shoulder.
"Tired? Want some stamina?"
"Scott, follow me?" Fernanda takes Scott upstairs.
His bedroom is indeed green. There is a evergreen-forest themed wallpaper, green carpet and green-glass fixtures. They have to remove sheets from the furniture and change the bedsheets, but it is immediately livable otherwise. The bathroom is the door next door and doesn't have any particular theme.
"Opinions on Katur?"
She sits on the bed and invites him to join her. "Hard to quantify. He has reasonably good morals and goals despite society's pressure and is willing to listen to reason when we - Felicia and I - disagree with him. He isn't ambitious, but I could see him using power wisely if power were handed to him."
Okay, that was expected. She should be more careful with wording.
"Okay, I will put a hand on your chest and then guide you through a series of mental exercises. At some points you will feel out of breath and at others it will be the opposite..."
She does that and guides him through the exercise, it involves a lot of imagining things and focus on sensations, like imagining himself underwater and needing to go up. At a point he is suppose to hold his breath with his nose and not take air at all... yet he manages to go a couple of minutes without even feeling the need to breath in.
"You're doing well." She tells him.
"You also can learn to manipulate your own lifeforce and then use magic, but not being a proper sorcerer and having the extra lifeforce means it could be harder or more dangerous. Giving or spending breath is much like being out of breath or being suffocated depending ho much you go. With stamina you feel a tiredness similar to having made a physical effort, but... without being from a muscle. Wakefulness makes you sleepy and mentally lethargic. Health causes generalized weakness and sometimes other symptoms like fever if you go too far. Youth doesn't have immediate side effects but the person age faster and abusing it can cause cancer."
They try it, more painting symbols on Scott, chanting and burning smelly herbs ensue.
And now Scott can step into this room to disrobe and floof and check the results...
...the hollowness is indeed numbed, it isn't as pleasant as being a wolf with a pack, but it isn't the agony of deep loneliness.
Fernanda leads the way and motions him to get onto bed, she doesn't make comments that he should get dressed. But he can certainly do that if he wants to.
"So the wakefulness exercises are a bit harder not only because the specific subset of lifeforce is more complex, but they require more mental coordination and - sometimes - actually falling asleep. Don't worry about not getting it right, just keep doing the exercises as I tell you. Now, close your eyes..."
And she walks him through more mental exercises while keeping a hand in his forehead.
"Likely, someone is going to try to make it a profitable opportunity by keeping the Elsewhere and related worlds a secret. Magic in our own Earth is a secret because of that, people, there are just too many people that benefit from having the advantage of knowing that magic exists and they stop anyone who tries to change that."
"The interactions between your shapeshifting and sorcery are definitely worth exploring, and is only efficient if part of the exploration be conducted by the tribe itself. Not to mention a good way to establish a fairer relationship. And if vampires are a problem sorcery offers options for them to stop being."
"Oh? I actually don't know much besides how to superspeed mowing the lawn when I'm bored. The former caretaker moved five years ago after the dead city got closer. When we first moved it was an unexplored jungle and the house was barely liveable," Felicia says, but with a smile.
The lot is pretty big, they prioritized keeping the walls clean off vines and make the swimming pool usable again. The vegetation in some places is too thick to navigate through, there is a shed that is barely visible from amidst some thorny bushes. This small tree is half-way dead and the weeds that are killing it are going to take nearby vegetation as well. This hut is more covered in vine than paint. There is plenty to do. There is a pretty nice orchard though and most flowering plants still look pretty when untamed.
"I will, I do know Felicia's general preferences. Katur is going to at some point divide the lot and sell, so maybe nothing hard to uproot? But that isn't really a major concern just a plan for the future. Oh, and there are some very interesting Elan plants altered for gardening, tomorrow I can show you the pool, there are lily pads, except in multiple shapes."
It doesn't take too long, Scott will have time to take a shower if he decides to. Soon enough Fernanda casts the spell.
So, this spell is meant to poke deep in the imprinting. ...What are the imprinting traits? How does it pick? And what are the limitations of Scott's love for Fernanda?
From the moment a wolf activates, there are potential imprints everywhere. Once a wolf imprints, that pool of many possible matches narrows down to one, and so does the wolf's mind. The wolf cannot imagine a course of action that would hurt his imprint without pain, and cannot commit to hurting his imprint, even at the imprint's request. The imprint is the center of the wolf's worldview. A wolf's imprint must be a woman who is theoretically fertile. There are no other requirements.
Scott's love for Fernanda matches her potential love for him. If she is capable of loving him in a certain way, he loves her in that way. He would do anything for her, except hurt her.
It doesn't look like something that could be trivially changed (she wasn't going to, because Scott doesn't want that, but it is important to know). And it is absurdly strong.
Is Scott capable of accepting Fernanda loving more than one person? Does the situation improve if Fernanda loves him as well?
Is Scott capable of loving other people? Or even just experience sexual attraction?
(This was meant to explore imprinting limits, so...)
Could Fernanda get Scott to kill someone? To torture someone? To have sex with someone? Is Scott capable of having preferences that are disagreable with Fernanda's (and aren't about imprinting safety)? Generally, is preferable for Fernanda to openly express her desires so Scott can fufill them?
Scott can love other people, but not in the way he loves her (completely, unconditionally).
He is only attracted to her, now and in the future, and no one else.
Fernanda could get most of those things from Scott with enough convincing, but he does have his own preferences that can contradict her own.
If she pushes hard enough, she can request anything.
Expressing her desires helps; otherwise, he'll just guess.
"Keep him around, let him do things for me and not treat him badly." Fernanda says with a shrug. "I won't purposefully develop romantic feelings for him just because, but I can at least have some gratitude and fondness. Scott and I will need to talk more about sex, but that is a thing we could try too."
She thinks. "hard-working, easy-going, open-minded, dedicated, smart and... they care about us? I mean, they were sort of afraid that we would overwork ourselves to save the world and weren't very supportive of that plan until we had our fight with our grandparents. They've always been supportive of our relationship with Katur."
"Full context then. Felicia and I are Daliath, which is an religious-slash-ethnic group from Elan," Fernanda tells Scott a summary of how centuries ago her ancestors are oppressed by the Govad and the Govite, collectively known as Govis, until people started to manifest sorcery.
Fernada provides a side explanation about Synth, Elan native magic that allows the combination of traits between living beings. Augmentation of humans is one, making them stronger, healthier and live longer. Katur is a full augmented, Govad was a rulling class of full-augments. The Govite are the lower class of standard humans. Daliath are composed of the partially-augmented (people that haven't been augmented to the maximum or descendant of mixed parents). Synth interacts with lifeforce such that partial-augmented, are better sorcerers than everyone else.
(Fun fact: one way to get sorcery gifts is by putting your lifeforce under a lot of stress, such as various forms of torture and physical exhaustion. It's unreliable and unlikely but many Daliath got their gifts this way.)
A group of sorcerers that found themselves in Elsewhere rediscovered several secrets of sorcery, some of those sorcerers were Daliaths. They found their way back to Elan and the oppressed Daliaths starting a rebellion that pretty much crushed the Govad empire. The Daliath migrated to a different continent and prospered there.
The twins' ancestors settled in the city of Milirevi, becoming their patrons and a huge social presence. The Vaesteri do a ton of charity work, including disaster relief. Their own house being used during emergencies sometimes. The twins' mom had an older brother. He was a healer and collapsed from exhaustion while trying to save a young mother, she died in his bedroom.
The Daliath have a habit of putting a black flower in a room where someone died. The uncle had to look at that symbol everyday and couldn't take it. He jumped out of the building.
Fernanda's mother, her husband and surviving brother then decided to leave and start life again in a different universe. They went to Earth where the twins were born and raised unaware of Elan, Elsewhere or magic until they're teens and their parents decide to contact the grandparents once again. They rekindled contact and... the twins really wanted to learn magic and use to the greater good and all. So they moved in with their grandparents for a while. Their grandparents are very hopeful this would mean that the family legacy could be saved.
Then the twins fell in love with Katur and told about it to their grandparents. They didn't react well.
Fernanda gauges his reaction before proceeding.
"I would like to make a note that my grandparents have done and do a lot of good work. I have no desire to see them hurt. But... they basically tried to force us into arranged marriage to candidates of their choice, or they would block us from getting any sort of magical education. We decided not to yield and moved in with Katur."
"I think they will be confused by the fact that there are two Earths. Might default to keep it in the dark too, since they already doing that with the other. I personally would prefer if everything was public, but that is something to be done very carefully and diplomatically. They don't really have a standard protocol for new worlds."
"There is trismegistus, Lor-ersian..." Fernanda recites quite a few, "they mostly diverge in things like how easily you can develop a spell for a given thing or how much it costs to cast. The rules are arbitrary, but people didn't know that until recently and the new schools influenced by the older schools, so you end up with a lot of weird rules."
Fernanda leads him inside, there are several books, this is the sorcery-equivalent of a dictionary (or rather a rulebook?), explaining what each action is supposed to do in a magical context. Once Scott read and remembers enough of those, here is a simple ritual for him to cast, which will give him a few minutes of telekinesis.
"You're a not using a lot even by regular human standards, likely less so for werewolf ones. And the thing works by..." she is explains the various elements of the ritual, how this has the function of drawing his lifeforce, this bit prevents him from spending too much, this complex system over here is the "blueprint" of the telekinesis power and each element contributes with something, finally, these various runes over here are meant to redirect lifeforce that would've otherwise been wasted.
There is beginner-level healing magic! Transfering lifeforce itself is a good all-purpose form of healing but doesn't do all the fiddly work without some level of skill and can therefore end up cost more lifeforce. Fernanda shows him some spells for various more specific healing. This one does health transfer for people haven't picked it up as a skill. This one can break fever. This one is good to disinfect both injuries and medical tools...
Fernanda makes a so-so gesture. "Mostly it requires you to understand it well enough so you can be efficient. Using example of the telekinesis spell. If all I wanted to do was lift it up and transport a chair to a specific location I could've written something that does that specifically and that would've taken less lifeforce than the generic telekinetic effect."
So Scott learns as much as he can about sorcery, with a particular eye to healing magic.
He doesn't phase, and doesn't think about phasing, because that makes the holes at the edge of his mind feel much wider, deeper, more impossible to avoid falling into. So he thinks about Fernanda, and about what he can do with this magic.